Success Guide: Advanced Virtual Tours

Welcome to RE Technology's Success Guide for Advanced Virtual Tours. You will learn how to become THE expert in your market with industry-leading ideas and solutions. We have hand-picked our favorite tools proven to help real estate professionals grow their businesses. Download the FREE guide to learn how you can leverage online marketing in new and exciting ways to beat the competition!

What is Advanced Virtual Tours?

The concept of a virtual tour has dramatically changed over the past two years. When most agents think of virtual tours, they think of picture slide shows. In truth, the only virtual thing about these tours was using technology to digitally jump from one photo to another. For this reason, we are issuing this Advanced Virtual Tour Edition to support your decision making around how to best market your listings online.

The latest and most advanced providers of virtual tours are simulated “real-life” experiences like the holodeck on Star Trek. New camera technology is driving this innovation, allowing professional photographers and advanced hobbyists to capture everything the eye can see onto a digital canvas. Cameras used in these advanced virtual tours make use of 360-degree rotation and 3-dimensional image resolutions. Photographers do not even use the term “take pictures” anymore. When referring to capturing everything in a room, they refer to it as “scans.” Once the interior of a property is scanned, the opportunities to present the property in the best possible way are limitless.

These camera scans have given birth to a new genre of editing tools. New software allows professional editors to truly create virtual environments that homebuyers can experience on any screen (mobile, desktop, tablet).

In the development of these virtual environments, decorative changes can be made to a property to enhance its marketability without misrepresenting a home. Remember, when listing a property, its contents are not normally included for sale in the listing. It is not unethical to virtually restage the home to demonstrate its potential. Now, agents can work with these advanced virtual tour vendors to take the bones of a house and really make it stand out with virtual staging, redecorating, and even twilight conversions and automated floorplan and room size calculations.

Virtual Tours have finally come of age and are living up to the concept of virtual.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN BUYING ADVANCED VIRTUAL TOURS

Whenever you buy anything, the focus should be on value and not price. And when it comes to software for your real estate business, the best tool is the one that you love to use and the customer service that you get. These paradigms of truth ring the loudest when it comes to advanced virtual tours.

Photographer

Unless you are a pretty serious photo hobbyist, capturing advanced virtual tour scans should be left up to the professionals. Be sure that you are working with a photographer that has experience with the advanced virtual tour solution that you are planning to work with or request a referral from your vendor to get a list of local photographers.

Turn Around Time

You only have one opportunity for a first impression. It is vital that you insert your virtual tours into your MLS listing when you are building the listing. The moment the listing goes active in the MLS, serious buyers who have saved searches in the MLS are immediately notified that a new listing matches their search criteria. Nationally, MLS systems send out over 100 million emails to consumers each month. It is your first shot to get your beautiful marketing in the hands of the hottest buyers. If your MLS requires you to input your listing within 48 or 72 hours of signing the listing agreement, make sure that your tour provider can support this timeline.

Branded and Unbranded Tours

Be sure that your vendor provides you with branded and unbranded tours.

Licensing

Who owns the photos and the tour? For the most part, the photographer or the company that they work with own the media that they capture. Take a careful look at the license agreement to see what rights you have as a licensee. You want to make sure that there are no restrictions for you to use the tours in all of the ways you plan to use them. For example, some companies limit the use of the tours after the homes have been sold. Also, if you care about the photographer using the photos in other ways, that is a discussion that you should have – especially if your seller has particular concerns.

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS WITH ADVANCED VIRTUAL TOURS

For the most part, you will be marketing your listings using these advanced virtual tours. You will apply the same process you have been doing all along with basic branded and unbranded virtual tours. The best news is that these Advanced Virtual Tour solutions will drive engagement and word of mouth excitement that will make you, your buyers, and your sellers very happy.

Branded and Unbranded Tours

One of the greatest benefits of participating in multiple listing services is the distribution of your listing to every broker and MLS website in your market through the Internet Data Exchange or IDX program. Be sure to insert the unbranded tour link of all your listings into the correct field in your MLS. Regardless of the quality of the website, your beautiful virtual tour will make the best possible impression on homebuyers as they click through listing after listing. They are sure to stop and be as amazed by your marketing as they are by the house.

Build Tours of Your Office and Affiliate Offices

Your office is your lion’s den. It is not only a place that you meet with customers, but also a place that you congregate with your team. Building a virtual tour of your offices will not only make your office webpages stand out, provide comfort to consumers, make your office social media and Google business pages look outstanding, but will make a great impression on other agents in the area who may be considering switching firms. A number of brokers and agents have told us that affiliates in Mortgage, Title, and Insurance, also love to have these tours built for the same reason.

Capture Community Tours

Want to really impress the owner of a popular restaurant or store? They typically struggle with marketing as much as anyone. Take a look at their website or their Yelp page. You will be astounded by how much real estate marketing has evolved beyond the way that most companies market themselves. Consider investing in offering a virtual tour to local businesses. They will not only remember you when they are planning a move, but they will offer referrals. Most of all, they will remember your branding and your strong call to action.

Stage the Same Home in Different Styles

Sometimes, even the most beautifully decorated home doesn’t match the taste of the home buyer. My wife hates modern (chrome) and country (oak) but loves classical (mahogany and cherry). With today’s virtual staging, you can get creative by developing the scans to suit a variety of palates. Another great idea is to convert a room into a nursery or convert a room that is currently a nursery into an office or a bedroom to show the flexibility of the space.

Create a Look Book

Take pride in the homes that you list and sell. Add a page to your website where you store the archive of all of the homes you have virtually staged. It becomes a great look book that you can use as a reference on listing presentations or for any other reason. It can be especially helpful when you want a catalog of designs to show.

If you survey the marketplace you compete in, I would expect that you will find that few, if any, brokerages, agents, or teams have deployed these advanced marketing ideas. A little effort on your behalf can have a dramatic impact on creating the differentiation that you need to attract customers. Best of all, your listings will sell faster.

VISUAL TOURS PRODUCTS